“It appears that although it achieved Earth orbit, Dragon is experiencing some kind problem right now,” said John Insprucker, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 product manager on the Spaceflight Now live coverage at Mission Status Center. There was a glitch in the Dragon capsule’s thruster pods, according to an article in the Guardian, and three of the four thruster pods, which guide the spacecraft into orbit, failed to activate.

Issue with Dragon thruster pods. System inhibiting three of four from initializing. About to command inhibit override.

But two thruster pods are, unfortunately, only two-thirds of the power needed to dock with the ISS. Four hours after take-off, mission control announced that the capsule will not be arriving at the ISS tomorrow as planned.

“They are making progress recovering their prop system, but it’s not going to be in time to support the rendezvous and capture for tomorrow,” NASA’s spacecraft communicator told the crew. They are still hoping to attempt a second rendezvous sometime in the next few days.

Space station commander Kevin Ford said, as reported Spaceflight Now: “That’s space exploration for you. We sometimes have problems and work through them, and that’s how you learn.”

“If not tomorrow, maybe a couple of days down the road we’ll get it licked,” Ford said.